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I have two scenarios of which I'm curious what the Imperium would do. First off, I know there never will be a victory in 40k, and I know that these scenarios are unlikely, but I'm curious what would happen.

1. Tau are nearly destroyed, only a few planets remain, and the Imperium is closing in, All but one of the Tyranid hive fleets have been destroyed, and the remaining one is crippled, nearly destroyed. Abbodon is dead, and the Imeprium has begun a massive counter offensive that could overrun of of the Eye of Terror. Most of the Craft Worlds are bruning, and Necrons are almost crushed, Dark Eldar face extinction, all but one Ork clan remains, the final one nearing complete destruction. In other words, everybody is nearly destroyed by the Imperium, in its current state in M41 how would it go through surrenders and annexation, would it (hopefully, because burn the heretic) just cleanse everything, set up puppet states, enslave them ect.

2. Now do this, but the Emperor is leading them, how would he change things.

Note I get it, this would happen and chances are the forces would still meet stalemate, but lets assume right now that the Imperium is about to destroy everything, and yes that invasion force will destroy eveything in the Eye of Terror, and no, no one somehow defeats the Imperium, ok, just go through the surrenders and annexation, thats it. Can't wait to hear the results (which I assume aren't going to be the nice) of what would happen. Also, how would be willing to surrender, does Tau have so code of honor that prevents this, obivously Tyranids can't surrender, they'll die.

Errrm ok so let's assume the imperium accomplished all that still within the boundaries of M41, all the emotion, all that carnage and destruction: chaos gods=New level powerful, powerful to the level that they would probably eclipse all other warp dieties (coupled with the fact support for those warp deities has dimished due to the loss of many of their followers). Now the imperium launches an attack into the eye of Terror. Uh oh...let's just say it wouldn't be a pretty campaign

Again, lets say the Imperium has some Machiours/Creed/Yarrick super commander and even if the death count was high (even 90% losses) we say the Imperioumwouild be able, if it wished to completly overrun all of chaos and burn it. Ok, since the Imperium has won every other theatre, all that remains is chaos, so the entirity of the Imperium COULD 9of course beuracary and garrison duty calls some elsewhere) mobilize its biggest campaign ever. Not a pretty compiagn may be true, but my main quesiotn is, would the Imperium accept any surrrenders, or enslavent, imprisonemnt, ect. Or would they just burn everything.

Without the emps it would be burn the heretic cleanse the xenos.

With he might keep usefull Vassle races like the few remaining tau or eldar.

What would happen, if Big E was still dead/on life support?

The Imperium would appear to win. But then, they start to fracture, infighting, civil wars, and all that tearing them apart. Then, whatever the Tyranids were running from shows up and eats them.

What if Big E came back too?

The Imperium would get anyone who thinks of revolting slapped silly by Big E. Then, whatever the Tyranids were running from shows up and eats them.

Ah, if they are running from something, (and not just had eat their galaxy and moved onto the next new one)

So, What I get, without the Emperor,
]The Imperium cleanses everything, and then civil wars? WHy the civil wars, the Imperium is no longer fighting external threats, if anything tries to attack it, it has more guardsman to spam, the Imperium has kept its people united (as far as I know) through two ways, 1. Fear, Arbites will do a full scale invasion on anyone who denouces the Emperor, 2. tolerance, they are ok with all reilgions, as long as they see the Emperor as their leader, and they're decentralized, allowing a planet to rule as they wish, as long as they follow the Imperium if the time arrives for the Imperium to step in.

Would the Imperium begian a war with the tech-priests, a campaign to cleanse all mutants, expand into another galaxy?

With the Emperor
People stay united (though I think the Imperium can do that itself), and some races could become puppet states/ slaves/ low level citizens of the Imperium, others are cleansed

Take my question I just wrote up there about new plans, does this change?

There would still be civil wars because of people like Saint Basillius, Vandire, etc. People in power who are corrupt.

Also, there were events like the ones involving Nova Terra and the Moirae doctrine. The civil war in the Imperium that resulted from Nova Terra was purely due to politics (no chaos taint here) lasted the better part of 900 years and resulted in billions of deaths and the empowerment of the Ecclesiarchy (also recorded as the largest civil war within the Imperium since the Horus Heresy as of M35). The Moirae doctrine resulted in a 2,000 year bloody schism within the Adeptus Mechanicus and that only happened because of a disagreement over the identity of the Omnissiah.

The Imperium, especially without the Emperor's guidance will continue to see loads upon loads of civil war. Frankly, the story of the mankind is if they're not saying war against the xenos, the heretic, or the daemon, they're fighting amongst themselves on some scale. (And waging war into the Eye of Terror or any Warp Rift is considered a bad idea only reserved for those on penance crusades).

If the Emperor does manage to comeback, perhaps there would be chance for a new golden age... unless, you know, the Emperor failed to learn his lesson and makes the same mistakes all over again, giving the gods of chaos a good laugh.

Ah, touche.

So, there would be more civil wars, after peace was estabilished (though it never would be in all reality). What would happen to the Adeptus Mechanicus, seeing there is not external crisis to distract the Imperium.

So its absuoltly impossible for the Imperium to wage war in the immaterium, or warp-rifts.

Yeah the real problem is the chaos gods. You will constantly empower them ever more so with war, which in turn they will always find a charismatic, strong and willing leader to be the next Horus, Abby etc etc.

The human race needs to be extinct to abolish the power of the chaos gods, along with certain other races.

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
counter offensive that could overrun of of the Eye of Terror.

.....eh?

 hippyjr wrote:

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
counter offensive that could overrun of of the Eye of Terror.

.....eh?

Yeah...I don't think think that is actually possible...

+1 For civil war in both scenarios.

 JNAProductions wrote:
What would happen, if Big E was still dead/on life support?

The Imperium would appear to win. But then, they start to fracture, infighting, civil wars, and all that tearing them apart. Then, whatever the Tyranids were running from shows up and eats them.

What if Big E came back too?

The Imperium would get anyone who thinks of revolting slapped silly by Big E. Then, whatever the Tyranids were running from shows up and eats them.

I recommend reading the Horus Heresy novel Pharos, as that will put the bolded part of your quote into context. I won't reveal any spoilers, but let's just say there's no running involved.

If the emperor returns then once the future of humanity has been secured, he will start to purge the astartes the way he did the thunder warriors so no group would be powerful enough to threaten the Imperium. This would lead to a galactic scale war and herald the rise of WH50K.

So, Chaos is unkillable? What if every heretic died, and for a year no one betrayed the Imperium, would chaos just get more followers afterwards.

Civil war is starting to sound like the only course left

Hm, but didn't the Emperor say the astartes werepermant, unlike the tunderwarrioirs

CommanderRednaxela wrote:
So, Chaos is unkillable? What if every heretic died, and for a year no one betrayed the Imperium, would chaos just get more followers afterwards.

Civil war is starting to sound like the only course left

Defeating chaos is not about killing every heretic. Every human that feels emotion feeds some form of warp entity. The chaos gods are simply warp entities that are "fed" by more people, by virtue of epresenting emotions that are more widespread (such as ambition or fear of death) and thereby becoming more powerful within the warp. The only way to kill the chaos gods is for the vast majority of all warp-sensitive life to become completely emotionless.

Hm, so the Imperium slaughters everything, and everyone then. With civil wars trying to stop them?

If the Imperium can destroy every Xeno threats and be only left with Chaos to deal with, they should be able to handle most of what Chaos has to offer, especially if there's a Thunder Warrior-like purge of the SM once everything is secured.

After that all they'll have to do is clear the occasionnal rebellion and station a lot of troops on Cadia (and now that they can afford to send troops there, it would be a non issue)

You have to remember the Imperium is set up to manage human psykers until human's psychic evolution reaches the point where humans are no longer vulnerable to daemonic attack.

So then Mankind becomes what Eldar never could be?

 hippyjr wrote:

Defeating chaos is not about killing every heretic. Every human that feels emotion feeds some form of warp entity. The chaos gods are simply warp entities that are "fed" by more people, by virtue of epresenting emotions that are more widespread (such as ambition or fear of death) and thereby becoming more powerful within the warp. The only way to kill the chaos gods is for the vast majority of all warp-sensitive life to become completely emotionless.

Not necessarily, Warp entities such as the Chaos Gods are both fed and moulded by the emotions of sentient races with a psychic connection.

If everyone would JUST GET ALONG AND STOP BICKERING, the warp gods would be pretty alright dudes.

Make for a pretty stale wargame though...

When is the last time siblings went through life not wanting to murder one another at one point? Now multiply that by every family on earth. Now give it 40k years of the same thing, and multiply it by a million+ worlds. "Just getting along and not bickering" isn't really something that human beings do.

deathmagiks wrote:
When is the last time siblings went through life not wanting to murder one another at one point? Now multiply that by every family on earth. Now give it 40k years of the same thing, and multiply it by a million+ worlds. "Just getting along and not bickering" isn't really something that human beings do.

Hah I didn't actually mean to suggest it was likely, or feasible in any way in the 40k universe. Especially when the gods themselves would actively work to circumvent any peace that was made.

It's just the only way to genuinely defeat the Chaos Gods without either severing the psychic link between the Materium and the warp, or wiping out all warp-connected species (which would sort of be like one massive hit which the Gods would ride for decades, and then in the come-down afterwards they'd starve to death).

Severe the link between the materium and the warp,

How? If you could do that, wouldn't that starve the chaos gods, thus killing chaos?

The Imperium has suffers from near-constant civil wars across dozens of planets, and this in turn helps feed the Chaos gods. There's a reason Khorne is the most powerful diety in tne 41st Millenium.